


here's how it goes

by lizardcookie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hogwarts Era, Slow Burn, sixth year-seventh year jily, whose ready for some pining!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-07-24 02:04:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardcookie/pseuds/lizardcookie
Summary: A few glimpses into the months that changed everything. Changed James, changed Lily, changed the course of the Wizarding War. From enemies to friends to lovers, til death.





	1. Sixth Year, Part I

**September**

A look to the left, right, and back reveals nothing. She pulls her bag snug against her body, setting a brisk pace out the stone corridor, and hears only her footsteps echo around her. Just another turn and--

A hand shoots out, grabs her arm, and she knows who it is without having to turn her head.

“You’ve been ignoring me.”

Lily ignores that. But the grip on her arm is harder to ignore, so she stills, eyes trained forward on the Potions classroom now beyond her reach. 

“Enough’s enough, Lily. You’ve proven your point. Can’t you just forget about it?”

They both know this is far too little, far too late, and Lily swallows her urge to fight him on it. Far gone is his ability to put his foot in the door she should have locked long ago. Lily knows this is it for them, but experience has taught her to be wary of herself. 

Severus squeezes her arm, desperate.

“That's it? You have nothing to say?”

She doesn't, and then he’s gone. By the time Lily makes her way up the stairs and into the Great Hall, she’s too busy trying to calm herself to notice anything else.

That’s when a different hand grabs her, startling Lily out of her revere. Sirius Black’s arm cuts across her chest, stopping her from a full body collision with James Potter.

“Merlin, Evans. Watch it,” Black chides.

She’s wandered into a familiar scene: Potter and Black conspiring together over a scrap piece of parchment with whatever plan they’ve concocted for tonight detailed on it. It’s just the two of them, better than the whole set, but more than what Lily wanted to deal with at the moment. Sirius eyes her with more disinterest than disdain, but Potter doesn’t even look at her. No quick smile, no awful smirk. Nothing.

Sirius snaps his fingers. “ _Oi_. Evans.”

“Oh! I was just-- it doesn’t matter,” Lily shakes her head, trying to pull herself together. It’s late, and she shouldn’t have been so near the Slytherin dormitory alone, and maybe if she’d been smarter she wouldn’t be standing between Potter and Black for the first time since their public fight on the Lake last June. All she wanted was to brew in peace, not be assailed by everyone who made the end of last year so horrid.

“Anyway…” She pulls herself together, primly adjusting her bag across her shoulder and offering a curt, polite nod. “Good night.”

Black nods back. Potter doesn’t. 

She wishes it weren’t like this. She wishes Severus wasn’t on his way to You-Know-Who’s inner circle, and she wishes James Potter could be so much more than what he is. She wishes he could be the boy she’s caught glimpses of but never really met-- the one who sits with Remus in the Hospital Wing, who makes sure that Peter understands McGonagall's most recent essay, the only one who actually has any sway over the actions and opinions of Sirius Black. She wishes he weren’t the inconsiderate, cocky git she’s known of late, but who James Potter could have been is the least of her concerns this evening. 

The list of people who have failed her recently has grown beyond James, for much more serious issues, and Lily doesn’t want to think any more on it tonight.

When she gets to her room, Lily finds that Mary’s left a candle burning for her.

Not everything is so bad.

****

She tests her luck two nights later, this time with success. When no one stops her in the dungeon as she leaves the Potions classroom and she doesn’t collide into anyone in the Great Hall, she treats herself to a leisurely stroll back to Gryffindor Tower.

The halls in the night are a special thing, quiet and empty but full of _something_. She likes the echoing stone, the magic that seeps through these brick walls, and the reminder that she can still call this castle her own. The corridors in the daytime whisper things about her, about the war, about imposters and dirty blood, but the corridor tonight only whispers potential back to her. Lily smiles, running her hand along the wall, repaying the silence’s kindness with her own.

It doesn’t last. 

He seems to be waiting for her in the light, resting casually against the wall, flipping his wand deftly between his fingers, the glow from his lit wand tip casting even stranger shadows across his face.

“Out late, Evans.” A comment, not a question-- very like him. 

It is not fear but annoyance that stirs in her chest. James Potter is a lot of things, but a threat to her safety isn’t one of them. 

Without sparing him another glance, Lily keeps walking, her focus back on the stone detail near the ceiling she’d been following. 

“You’ve no excuse to be here, Potter.”

His long legs take one slow step for every two she makes. “Neither do you.”

“I’m a Prefect. I don’t need an excuse.”

He shrugs. “And have you ever known me to need an excuse to be out?”

Lily scoffs, disdain dripping from the sound. “You’re insufferable.”

“So are you, but at least I don’t pretend to be otherwise.” He seemed to be fluffing himself up, appearing even taller than usual. He didn’t used to be that tall.

“Oh, sod off,” Lily cuts out, the weight of the week heavy on her shoulders. She knows there are things to be said to James Potter, things that can maybe salvage the tentative bond they’d had before, but she can't find the energy to do so. Instead, she just gives him a dismissive shake of her head. “It’s late. You must have better things to do than be here.”

“Do I?” he hums, an edge to his voice. Potter's eyes are critical when he asks, “Maybe you have a suggestion. I know, how does hanging around the Dungeons alone at all hours for Slytherins to find me sound?”

In one moment they were walking along side by side and in the next, James Potter found himself backed against a wall with Lily Evans’ elbow jabbing up into his sternum in a rather uncomfortable manner. She leaned into it for emphasis, in case there was a chance he could have mistaken her ire for anything else. 

“You don't get to do this. You don't get to judge, or comment, or pretend to care about what I do.” Lily didn’t ask how he knew where she went when she thought no one would notice her. James Potter is the sort to just know these things. She can feel his chest move steadily with his breathing, not reacting. Just glaring back at her. 

Lily tears herself from him, a knot twisting in her stomach. They’d been friends before last year. She had enjoyed his company and his easy way, and now he just seems so far away, too far to get back. The thought caused a weird grief to settle in her now, which only sharpened her next words. “You don’t know a single thing about me, Potter. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.”

That's how it usually goes between them. Lily’s fuse is inexplicably short around him, and James has always been one for explosions. It’s never clear who holds the match. That’s their way, because it’s easy and predictable and mostly fun. What’s unusual now is how he takes a moment to respond, and when he does, it’s with a sincerity that Lily’s never heard from him before.

James does something new. He douses the flames before the fire can set. 

“Can we not?” James says, slowly, his hands open at his sides. “I mean it. I didn’t come to fight, honest.”

Lily weighs him with a hard glance, and that’s when she’s surprised to learn that she can’t read him like she usually can. She has no idea what he’s doing here or what he’s trying to accomplish. This is new uncertainty, something unfamiliar. James Potter is a tosser with something below the surface, and she thinks it’s finally bubbling up. 

“You’re right, you know,” he adds quietly. “I don’t know you.”

Lily eyes him wearily and James stares back, a defeated slump to his usually perfectly balanced shoulders. She stands there, deciding what to do, deciding what her next minutes and months might look like. 

When she starts walking, he starts with her, and she doesn’t stop him.

“Decided I was worth talking to again?” Lily says, only slightly more accusatory than she intended to sound. “Kneazle had your tongue these past three weeks?”

Hands deep in his pockets, James doesn't meet her eye. “You did nothing to break that silence either, Evans.” 

“I have nothing to say,” she shrugs. “You, on the other hand, do.”

James doesn’t respond to that. He lets it hang in the air as they keep walking, testing out these waters. This is more than what he had expected when he saw her out alone again on the Map, and he was going to take it as far as he could. Sirius called it stalking, but if anything, he was stalking Slytherins, not Lily. Knowing she would end up here was just a perk. He didn’t think she’d stand his company, and now that they were talking, he knew this was his chance. He was tired of hiding from what he knew he needed to do-- what he should have done months ago. 

Besides. He likes this. He likes being alone with Lily Evans, even if he (deservedly) wasn’t one of her favorite people right now. She was tolerating him for the moment, and that was enough. So when she takes them around the bend that’ll pull them closer to the Prefect’s bathroom than the Tower, he takes his chance. They have a while to walk back, and he needs all the time he can get to explain himself to her. 

She stops in front of the statue of Boris the Bewildered, examining the detail at the foot of his robe with her fingers. This is Lily Evans lost in thought, and he regrets pulling her out of it to do exactly what she told him not to. 

James braced himself. Even to him this seemed reckless instead of brave.

“Remus says you’ve been quiet on patrols.”

The only sign that she’s actually heard him is how she stills her hand, frozen, before she slides it forward, taking her around behind the statue. He gets the message. It’s a warning of how easily she could make herself disappear if she wanted.

“Mary says you didn’t answer a lot of her letters this summer.” Slow footsteps echo around, and James stays rooted in place. “You’ve done more picking at your food than actually eating it since term started, and you haven’t answered a single question from Flitwick or McGonagall when we both know your’s should be the first hand up.”

Lily Evans leans against Boris with her arms crossed, warning written across her face.

“Stop.”

He takes a step nearer, and Lily holds her ground, glaring up at him. “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

Her eyes flash, and James is hit with the knowledge that this isn’t like their usual fights. There’s no playful banter, no reprimands or name calling. This means something to the both of them, and that’s scary. The understanding that this moment will have consequences is scary. Lily’s the one who takes the next step forward, and they’re nearly toe to toe. 

“What did I _just_ say about pretending to know me.”

“I’m not the only one saying this, Lily, and you know it.”

The truth in that is enough to knock her off her game, and it shows. 

“Well!” Lily steps away, trying to regain some of her high ground. “I’m glad to be so interesting to everyone all of a sudden.” She steps past him, throwing her words at him with sharp malice. “You should have just left me alone.”

Before she can get far down the corridor, James is there, blocking her exit. She locks onto him with a deadly gaze, and he surprises himself by not backing down. She crosses her arms, and he does the same. 

“Move, Potter.” 

“Hear me out, Lily. Please.”

Even in the dim light, she can fully appreciate what the past summer has done for him-- his dark skin has a healthy glow and he’s a few inches taller than he used to be, making her strain her neck to look up at him. 

His glare softens, and some bashfulness creeps through. James sighs. He’s worse at this than he had imagined he’d be. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t mean for that to come across as confrontational when I really am just trying to express concern. We’re just worried.”

“I don’t appreciate being discussed in committee!"

“It’s not like that,” James soothes, but he could see that he was getting nowhere. “ _I_ asked them about you, okay? And it took some bribing to get information out of Mary. She’s got enough sugar mice to last through Christmas.” Lily’s frown twitches, almost like a smile, so he keeps going. “I asked them because I know that whatever you’re going through is all my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s--” She starts, then stops. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. “For that stunt I pulled after O.W.L.’s. I’m sorry I put you on the spot like that in front of everyone. You didn’t deserve that. Don’t get me wrong,” James runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends, prepping for the next words to leave his mouth properly, “I hate that slimy, evil little git, but if I hadn’t pushed Snape so far, maybe he wouldn’t have called you a-- a you-know-what.”

Lily stands there, taking in the scene. James Potter taking responsibility for his actions is… new, to say the least, and from what she can tell, he’s taking responsibility for things beyond his control. His hand drops from its knot in his hair, the motion looking oddly heavy as he takes another deep breath. 

“I wanted to write you this summer, actually. I even tried to Floo powder to your place and got stuck in the chimney of some wizard named Evander when I realized your home wouldn’t be connected, and it’s probably just as well, because I doubt you would have wanted to see me even if I was trying to apologize.” He chuckles a bit, and Lily’s fascinated by it. James continues, “I guess this is just me saying that you were right about me being a, what were your words?” 

He smiles, one corner of his lip pulled up in a self deprecating grimace. “‘An arrogant, bullying toe-rag.’”

“Yeah,” Lily almost laughs. “That was it.”

“Very clever.” James says, a sort of fondness shining through before it falls away. “Anyway… that’s the only thing different between last term and this one that could have made this one bad for you. It was never my intention when I, er, asked you out like that. It was a stupid stunt that we should both just forget about.”

He’s blushing. James Potter is blushing, and it can’t be a trick of the light. Lily takes him in, weighing his words against his actions, her feelings, and finally with what she wants to believe is the truth.

James Potter is easy to deal with because he's predictable, a constant but crucially benign thorn in her side. She can count on Potter to be arrogant, loud, and irresponsible. But she can also count on Potter to be talented, brilliant, and loyal to his mates though it manifests more in disruptive rather than productive actions. 

Remus is usually the one apologizing for Potter. Remus is also the one who points out that she could probably stand to apologize to him sometimes, too. Remus isn't here right now, and what's left is just Potter and just Lily, who realizes she has no idea what happens without the formulaic predictability and safety she’s relied on for so many years. 

So Lily tries something new as well. James refused to light her fuse, so she repays his honesty with her own. 

“That's a lot to ask us to forget,” Lily mulls, watching his face fall just a fraction as he tries to hide his disappointment. “And some things in life shouldn’t be swept aside like they didn’t matter.”

James nods. He stands a little straighter, bracing himself. “Right. I understand, and I--”

“Let me finish!” Lily cuts him off, giving him a smile. Small, but genuine, because this is something she can feel good about, something she feels is worth granting. “I can forgive you instead.” 

“Really?” James’ smile isn’t small-- it’s big and bold, like him, and it’s blazing.

She starts walking again, leaving Boris even more Bewildered. James follows, like she knew he would. “You didn’t ask me what you really wanted to know.”

“Oh?” James tilts his head, feigning ignorance. Lily’s always been deft at reading him. Aside from Sirius, she was the only one who could call him on his shit. 

“I’m not friends with him anymore. That’s what’s different. He changed.”

She’s quiet and hesitant about it-- ashamed?-- but Lily’s trusted him enough to be honest, and the significance of the moment isn’t lost on him. James knows that she’s shared a part of her that few get to know. 

“Oh. Good. That’s…. I'm sorry.” 

She shrugs, releasing a heavy sigh. “It can't be helped.”

He’d like to say so much more, but knows better than to push his luck. That's an issue for another day, another time. They wander back on a more deliberate path, and before long, he’s holding the Portrait Hole open for her to pass through. The Fat Lady raises an eyebrow but stays silent. 

He only feels awkward when it’s time for them to part, but Lily Evans saves him with a curious look that makes him forget that having an unrequited crush can be lonely. 

“One more thing.” She tilts her head, eyes narrowed ever so slightly, letting him know that she’s onto him. “How’d you know where I was earlier?”

The ability to call him on his shit? Yeah, actually really hot. James doesn’t want to think about how bad that is, and tries to play it off. 

“Why, Evans, I was on my own midnight stroll,” He smirks, knowing that she knows that he’s lying. “Quite separate from yours.”

“Liar,” she says, with no trace of malice. “Tell me.”

James smiles, starts walking up the stairs. 

“I really have no idea what you could mean!” He calls down with some flair as she watches him with an amused smirk.

“I’ll find out, you know.”

“I have no doubt you will.”

That makes her blush, and it means the world to him.

“Sod off, Potter.”

“Night, Evans.” And that’s it.

*****

Years later, he asks why she made him wait so long. She responds that it was quite the opposite, and she was the one always waiting for him.

He asks why she was so harsh, why she singled him out for criticism, and she says it’s because she had to-- not for her sake, but for his. 

She asks why he endured it all, and he says it’s because he had to-- not for him, not for her, but for something bigger. It made him a better man, he says, a better soldier, and a better father.

* * *

**October**

Severus is on her track, _again._ Lily blames herself because she lingered too long in the Great Hall after waving Mary off to detention, but she picked up her pace as soon as she heard him call her name.

That’s how she nearly ran into him, _again._

“Woah there, Evans,” Potter says, lifting a large pot out of harm’s way. “What’s got you in a hurry?”

Lily turns her head and sees that Severus hasn’t followed her. She breathes a quick sigh of relief before looking back at the group of boys and James, who cocks his head in concern. Remus looks amused, but Sirius is visibly annoyed-- which is unusual. 

“It’s nothing important,” she answers, now curious about the potted plants they’re bringing into the castle. Remus shifts his a little guiltily as the twine starts to twist around his thin wrist.

Lily raises an eyebrow. “Devil’s Snare?” 

“Herbology extra credit,” Sirius lies.

“Oh, please,” she rolls her eyes, then turns her gaze back to James, knowing he’ll read the question on her lips.

James makes her wait in suspense for a moment before giving in. “We’re trapping Filch in his office while we break Peter out of detention. Mary too, if she’s there.”

Sirius makes a noise of derision, obviously displeased that James had let Lily in on the plan. Remus elbows him in the side, but James is still watching Lily, waiting for her reaction. 

“Leon McLaggen is on patrol tonight,” Lily reveals, and when she starts to walk the boys follow. “You should be careful. He’ll do anything to get back at Gryffindor after that match.”

James laughs. “Is he _still_ bitter about that? We won fair and square.”

“Yeah, in the first ten minutes,” Lily replies. “That’s pretty humiliating. He’s just miffed is all.”

“Unprofessional,” James shakes his head in disapproval. “A mockery of sportsmanship.” 

Remus adjusts his pot as the snare travels further up his thin arms and quips, “Were you the one who wouldn't leave the dormitory for a week after losing the Cup to Slytherin last term, or was that a different Quidditch Captain?”

James drops his grin as Lily and Sirius break into laughter. Lily doesn't see that Snape is still there, lurking, listening to her call him “nothing important” and watching her walk away with a werewolf and a family disgrace and James Potter of all people, and he thinks she might just be gone forever. 

*****

Lily doesn’t want to admit that James was right to be concerned about the Dungeons being too near the Slytherin dormitory to be a viable place to spend free time. When Crabbe and Avery began waiting around the Potions classroom for her, Lily bitterly took the hint. 

Her search for a new place to think leads upward to the Astronomy Tower, as far away from the Dungeons as possible. Only, that place has been claimed as Sirius Black's thinking spot for some time now and he doesn't take much to her intrusion. Hasn’t taken too kindly to her at all this term, actually, but Lily doesn’t have the energy to decipher Sirius’ moods. She earns her keep when she shows him how to roll a blunt the Muggle way and they sit and smoke in silence together, too absorbed in their own solitude to realize how their issues are eerily similar, families and betrayals and the war. 

“The only people worth a damn are the people who choose to be,” Sirius decides one night, tossing the finished blunt off the balcony, watching it flutter about the night wind. 

Lily, lying on her back, watching the stars, thinks he may be right and wrong at the same time. 

“Every person is worth a damn,” she decides. “The hard part is giving a damn about people who don’t do the same.”

Sirius doesn’t argue. 

*****

James Potter has detention and won’t tell her why.

“It’s nothing important,” he shrugs. Lily raises her eyebrows at him in suspicion.

“Punching someone in the middle of the library doesn’t seem like ‘nothing,’ Potter,” she presses. “C’mon, the Hufflepuff match is this weekend and you’re not stupid enough to risk playing in that. What happened?” 

“It’s really none of your business, alright?” He shoulders his bag, trying to walk away, but she grabs for his arm. There’s something dangerous about how even her fingers around his wrist has him begging for more, more, more, and so he pulls out the worst truth he has, tugging free of her. “I’m not your fucking problem.”

He knows it was harsh, knows he’s left a stung Lily Evans in his wake. It’s been good between them these past few weeks. Friendly and easy. Mary says she seems happier and James agrees. But there was no way he was going to tell her the truth about what happened, not when it keeps replaying in his head. 

“Professor, please, not the match.” James blanched, the pain of his bruised knuckles now faded into nothing. “Please. We’re ahead in the Cup and if you don’t let me play—“

“Would be something you’d deserve, acting that way in the Library of all places!” McGonagall’s nostrils flared, a sign he’d really managed to anger her. Disappointment and shame prickled against James' eyes, hiding beneath anger and indignation, which he found to be much safer emotions.

“Honestly, Potter, I thought we were through with this reckless behavior. You haven’t earned a detention all year so far. I was impressed.”

The shame he felt grew in size. “I know you won’t believe me when I say Bones deserved it.”

“Well, I’m glad to see some part of that brain of yours still works.”

“Even if I said he was talking about Muggleborns without using the word ‘ _Muggleborn_ ’?”

McGonagall paused in her stride, eyeing him carefully. “Is it safe to assume this was a specific Muggleborn student he was speaking about, Potter? Are you sure this was about his political stance, and not about her?”

His knuckles again throbbed in protest of having been rammed into Bones’ jaw not thirty minutes ago. He spoke quietly, seriously. “Students talk, Professor. I don’t know how much you and Professor Dumbledore hear, but I’ve heard the words dirty and blood and _Mud-_ you-know-what, too much this semester. He can’t talk about her like it doesn’t matter, like how he views Muggleborns doesn’t matter.”

“Did punching him quiet that talk, Potter?”

James tensed. “More than doing nothing would have.”

He couldn’t read her expression when she eyes him over her glasses, her witch’s hat sitting primly atop her hair. She sighed, and he could feel the weight of it spread through the room. 

“Have a biscuit, James. And win this weekend, won’t you? Something to cheer you up and think about in the two weeks of detention you have to look forward to.”

James trusts McGonagall, perhaps because of all the hours he's spent with her in detention. Perhaps because McGonagall used to come for tea at his parent’s since before he could walk. She's strict but by no means heartless. She's worried for things to come, and it shows. 

In the meantime, he didn't think Lily would take too well to his antics. He's afraid she'll think him reckless instead of principled, possessive instead of protective. Try as he wanted to hide it, her opinion of him was starting to hold more power over his actions than he would like to admit to himself.

It's pathetic to be so smitten by someone who could only just now stand his presence, and it’s shame, not pride, that tells him to walk away, to run from the fact that he still managed to disappoint her in anyway.

* * *

**November**

“Spar with me,” is what she hears, and as she looks up she sees that James Potter has his hands on her desk. 

“Is that a question or a demand?” She asks loftily, going back to writing the last of the Defense notes from the blackboard. She hears his fingers drum along the desk. 

“Oh, no, I know better than to _demand_ anything of you, Evans,” he plays off, his eyebrows raised expectantly. “This is more of a _‘partner-with-me-because-we-both-know-this-will-be-a-lot of-fun_ ’ sort of request.”

She doesn't look up, her quill moving swiftly across her parchment in neat cursive, so he lowers his head to be level with her. 

“Plus,” James says, “I’ve a feeling you’re still upset with me about the other day. So I'll tell you what. You let me know who you’re going to Hogsmeade with this weekend, and I’ll tell you why I spent two weeks with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest collecting unicorn dung.”

“Pass,” she decides without thought, smiling smugly at him. James smiles back. 

“Come now, Evans. What better way to settle our standoff than a little bit of academic combat?” He actually reaches his hand to stop her from writing more, because he suspects she’s just inventing notes to purposely annoy him. “Lily. You know you want to.”

Lily tilts her head back and forth, weighing him for a moment, before her eyes gleam with enthusiasm. “You’re on.”

At the end of the lesson, Professor Squibborn rewards each of them ten points for exemplary wand work, making a neat twenty for Gryffindor. They’re both a little out of breath, tired from having to keep up with the other, but when Lily pushes her hair out of her face, she’s beaming up at James. 

“Mary,” is what she says.

“What?”

“You asked who I’m going to Hogsmeade with this weekend. It’s Mary. We’re just having a girl’s day out.”

James ignores the little flare of joy in his stomach, that it’s not the date that he had heard McLaggen had asked her on. They’re walking to lunch and she’s looking at him expectantly. 

“Well?” Lily asks. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you spent a week with Hagrid collecting unicorn dung?”

“Hm,” James hums in thought, then smirks when he mimics her earlier deflection. “Pass.” 

She gives him a nice shove. “Prat!”

“Nosy,” he retorts back at her, nudging her shoulder lightly before they split to either side of the table for lunch. 

“You said you would! Double standard.”

“Sore loser.”

She passes him the potatoes as Remus settles on her other side. “Oh, please, that was at least a tie.” 

“Show off, then.” He slides her the pumpkin juice pitcher, then helps Mary with some butter that he wrestles from Sirius’ possession.

“ _Who_ proposed the whole thing in the first place?”

“And who was the one using unnecessarily advanced nonverbal spells?” James counters, the compliment catching Lily off guard as her peas slip off her fork. 

“Arse,” she replies, flinging the rest of her peas at him, and the rest of lunch passes in much the same manner. A new normal. Flitwick still tries to get Lily to pair with Sirius, the other top Charms student, but McGonagall actually smiles at James when he picks out rabbits for the two of them. It’s seen as the most natural thing in the world for the pair of them to be walking, talking, and studying together on a regular basis. 

Professor Slughorn pulls Lily aside one day, telling her that her future as a potioneer would be much more secure if she would just partner with Severus Snape again. 

“Merlin knows Potter can fly, my dear, but he certainly didn’t inherit his father’s proclivity for the finer points of potion making. The two of you used to make the most delightfully inventive brews, why don’t you just--”

But Lily Evans smiles at the old man and shakes her head, her eyes involuntarily finding James across the classroom. Admittedly, James did just explode his own potion simply to startle Remus out of a nap, earning a laugh from Sirius while she’s fairly certain that Peter just squeaked. But even in that chaos, James looks over to her like he can feel her watching and he winks, just for a moment, before joining the others in laughter.

Slughorn blabbers on about Snape for only a moment longer before Lily simply turns from him to reclaim her seat next to Mary, and it is with surprising certainty that Lily realizes she is happy for the first time in a long time. 

* * *

**December**

Mary’s dragging her out the train car before she has a chance to say goodbye to James. Not that it’s bothering her, of course. It’s not like there’s a pang of disappointment knotted in her stomach that she didn’t get to see him after the Christmas feast last night, and now they’ll be gone for a month. That would be silly, because James is just a good friend and there are plenty of just-good-friends whom she isn’t sad to leave over break.

Lily isn’t silly. Fun, yes, but a fool? Not anymore. 

That’s why Lily doesn’t dawdle when grabbing her luggage from the compartment, and that’s why she marches straight on to the platform to look for her mother instead of sticking around to find the Marauders. She’s never loved the month break, would almost have preferred to stay in the castle for the whole of it, but Lily knows she can’t leave her mother for as long as she already has. With Petunia and Vernon as her only company, Lily worried more and more for her mother’s well-being, especially with the anniversary coming up.

Lily doesn’t want to think of death. Lily wants to think of home, and of family, and of hopefully a few nice moments with her sister-- who, actually, is standing on Platform 9 waiting for her.

Lily’s heart sinks, and Petunia barely waits for Lily to give Mary one last hug before she’s walking towards the exit with a crisp pace that Lily, dragging a luggage cart behind her, can barely keep up with.

“It’s about bloody time,” Petunia says coolly. “You’re nearly ten minutes late. Some people have jobs, you know, and schedules to keep.”

She ignores this. It’s no different than how Tuney is, but it wasn’t even supposed to be Tuney picking her up. “Petunia, where’s Mum?”

Petunia doesn’t break pace, even when two young boys dash in front of her, barely missing the swift beat of her small heels. The shoes are new, Lily notices, and she also notices how Petunia takes a moment too long to respond, “She’s fine.”

“Petunia.” Lily stops walking, and other travelers stare, and that’s enough to cause Petunia to turn back to Lily with her lips pursed in the way that drives Lily nuts, partially because she knows that look so well. It’s the face Petunia dons when things are beyond their usual level of unpleasantness. It’s the face she pulls when she’s got bad news-- when she’d lost her job as a typist, when Lily’s cat died, when their dad died.

Petunia wears that horse grimace more and more lately. 

“She hasn’t left bed in a few days.” she confesses in a terse whisper, her lips barely moving so no passerby could hear. “I think she’s forgotten what day it is. That, or she can’t be bothered. You’re lucky Vernon had an emergency meeting and cancelled our lunch, so I was out of the office anyway. Else I would have just sent a taxi for you.”

“Gosh, Tuney. So thoughtful of you.”

“Anyway.” Petunia continues with a sharp, disdainful look as she smoothed down her sweater, beginning to walk away again. “I was hoping you’d talk to her. Mummy’s usually more, er, animated when you’re around.”

Lily bites her lip. She knows what Petunia means. Her usually withdrawn mother _was_ more active whenever she was home, but that’s only because she preferred to fight over her life in person rather than in letter. 

“Oh, don’t make that face,” Petunia snaps. “You’ve been away from months. The least you can do is actually try to be there for her this break.”

Lily holds her tongue. Tuney’s right. The Evans’ have been through enough this last year, and she shouldn’t complain. Thinking about a month with a combative Petunia and morose and despondent mother isn’t her idea of a break, but she isn’t catching many breaks in her life anyway. This is nothing new. 

****

Sirius thinks he’s being casual, but James sees right through it. As always, James sees right through it.

Moony and Wormtail are waiting in the hallway and Sirius is still just sitting there, pretending to sort through his new chocolate frog cards. Stalling.

James does his best to hold back his sigh, which he really thinks Sirius should thank him for. To think just last week Sirius had accused him of being tactless! 

“C’mon, mate, you know Mum’s tired of Dad’s London trivia by now. Ready to go?”

Sirius doesn’t answer, and James drops the tact.

“She’s not here. I saw her walk right out with Regulus soon after we pulled up.”

“Would you stop being so melodramatic, Prongs?” Sirius quips, folding his cards back in his pocket. “I was just making sure Wormtail didn’t knick my Edwina the Elder card.”

“Whatever you say,” James cedes, letting Sirius lead the way out. “You think Mum remembers she threatened to lock our brooms away if we kept flying out towards the highway? I kind of want to see more Muggle cars.”

He knows Sirius has been thinking about a motorbike lately, so James lets Sirius get hooked on a tangent about Muggle transportation. But when they meet up with Fleamont and Euphemia on the platform, James is distracted by Lily in the distance, trailing a tall, blonde woman in argument. He doesn’t know who Lily’s with, which surprised him. Lily’s life outside of Hogwarts is a mystery, one he’s never thought about, and one he has a suspicion she doesn’t want him to know about.

James can’t worry about that, no matter how much he wants to. He’s got an understandably brooding Sirius for his first Christmas out of that hell house, a full moon in a week to coordinate, and the growing concern that his dad can’t brew like he used to and his mum stays still more than she moves around. 

All things considered, though, things are good. His mother is already fussing with Sirius’ leather jacket, and James sees Sirius hide his smile, all sour mood gone. 

Things are good.

* * *

**January**

“Nice break, Evans?”

“Nice enough,” she says, smiling. James smiles too, a wide grin. It’s a blustery evening in Hogsmeade as they wait for the horseless carriages to take them back to the castle, and his wild hair blows in beat with the whistling wind. It feels like he’s grown another half inch since she saw him last, and it suits him. “You?”

“Mhm. Quiet, actually.”

“Oh, I find that hard to believe.”

He shrugs good naturedly. “Stranger things have been known to happen.”

There’s this sort of fluttering feeling in her stomach, and a warmth in her bones despite the wind chill. Lily thinks she may be able to name a few stranger things if pressed. 

Mary’s distracted by Marcelia Crunket and a few other Ravenclaws trying to rearrange the Gobstones Club meetings for the semester when James found Lily observing the proceedings with a lazy sort of interest. She and Remus had been spared from duty today because of the hours they’d put in December and Lily was enjoying watching a fifth-year Hufflepuff trying to tell a few older Ravenclaws off. 

“Do anything fun?” James asks, genuine interest in his voice. 

She doesn’t feel bad lying to keep the smile on his face. “Loads. I’m almost sad to be back.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” James dismisses with a jovial shake of his head. “Did you see anyone over break?” 

_Just Severus wandering the neighborhood._ “No. It’s harder for me and Mary to meet up than for you and Lupin and Pettigrew and Black.”

“Oh!” His smile falters and Lily regrets seeing it leave, even though she wouldn’t have let his assumption slide. “Yeah, that makes sense. Right, I forget sometimes.”

“It’s easy to forget when you’ve grown up with all the magic and trinkets you could ever need like you did.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It wasn’t really intentional that she did it, and later she’ll convince herself she was just trying to prove her point. But her hands do reach out, grabbing at the crisp, pristine fold of his collar underneath his robe. They rest there when she speaks, uninterested in leaving, playing with the fabric.

“Your hair might be beyond Sleakeazy’s help, but not the rest of you. You drip influence, James. You always have.” 

With her hands ghosting above his skin, so close to being wrapped around his neck, his whole body begging for more contact, for more, more, more, James found it a little hard to breathe. 

“Is it… is that bad?”

“When unacknowledged. When not actively being used for good.”

He nods, trying his hardest to listen to her rather than just feel her, a task that’s easier said than done.

“I’m, uh. I’m trying. To do that.”

A pause. “I know.”

She’s suddenly _very_ aware of what her hands decided to do and that they’re still straightening a collar that doesn’t need straightening. Very aware of the sudden intimacy, of what this might look like to an observer, of what her own treacherous heart is doing—

She’s saved from any awkwardness of the moment by a whistle in the distance. Around James’ shoulder she can see Sirius Black trying to get James’ attention. He looks properly impatient about it, sitting in the carriage with Remus and Peter with the door open, gesturing. 

She lets her hands drop unceremoniously. “Your friends are calling for you.”

“Yeah,” he seems almost disappointed, sparing a glance over his shoulder. He looks like he wants to say something, but then shakes his head and hits her with a lopsided grin. “I'd better go. No telling what they’d get up to unsupervised for this long.”

“Maybe something good for once,” Lily teases. Her heart is still beating a little too loud.

“Well, stranger things and all that, right?”

She laughs, and there's this moment where James smiles back, wide. That same thing which had earlier possessed her causes her hand to reach forward towards his, seeking warmth, seeking that smile--

But also she does is tuck her hair behind her ear to hide whatever that slip was, bidding him farewell.

Stranger things, indeed.


	2. Sixth Year, Part II

**January**

She wonders if he forgot her birthday, or if he ever knew it was today. Or if it should matter, or she’s just overthinking everything. It’s a Saturday, one that is chillingly cold even inside the castle, and it’s also one she can’t sleep in on. But her early breakfast isn’t early enough to catch James before practice— though that’s not why she decided to eat early anyway, so it doesn’t matter. 

It’s a lovely day, really. Mary gives her a golden locket, real gold, with her initials inscribed on the front. 

“Our families don’t know the tradition,” Mary says. “But you deserve someone to commemorate the day.”

The thought and gesture is more precious than the metal could ever hope to be.

Her mum even managed to send a card, and Remus gives her a Cauldron Cake. Peter gives her a nice round of wizard’s chess and Sirius gives her the cold shoulder before he disappears from the others. Lily thinks Quidditch practice should have ended hours ago, but that doesn’t really matter. 

It isn’t until well into the evening that he does show— though she wasn’t expecting him to, of course. 

“Not everyday a witch turns of age,” James announces himself behind her. She’s curled up on the couch, as buried in blankets as she is in her book. He smiles down at her, big, and hands her something. 

A bottle of Butterbeer, still cold. He has another one for himself that he pulls out of his coat, which is dusted with snow. 

“I’d like to guess where you’ve been,” Lily says. Any annoyance she’d had at him earlier vanished at the sight of him with a sporty looking maroon and gold jumper on. He settles down on the couch in front the fire with her on the other cushion. “But I’m not sure I want confirmation of how many school codes you’ve broken today.” 

“Maybe that’s for the best, then, Evans. Cheers,” he says, toasting her bottle. 

“But,” she said poking him in the arm, “Would you tell me if I  _ did  _ ask?”

James taps his nose. “Trade secret, I’m afraid.”

“And what if I promise to be impressed and use lots of words to describe your wit, intellect, and gumption?” 

“You think me so easy, Evans? Please.” Oh, he was. He was that easy. If Lily Evans pretended to be impressed that he’s been sitting with Sirius at the Three Broomsticks for longer than he’d planned this evening, knowing he wanted to find her tonight, then he would take out the Marauder’s Map and a few other secrets of his in a heartbeat. 

“Fine. Keep your secrets. I’ll find out, anyway.”

He takes a sip of his Butterbeer. “So you’ve said before.”

“Well, I am officially older and wiser now, you know. That’ll help me.” She smiles, satisfaction written in the corner of her lips. He’d like to know what that satisfaction would feel like on his lips, too. “Oh!” She exclaimed, realization dawning. “This means I am older and wiser than  _ you  _ for the next few months. I hope you enjoy walking everywhere while I Aparate.”

James rolls his eyes. “Load of good that’s going to do in the castle.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the principal of it, isn’t it?”

James doesn’t argue, only because it meant he got to keep imagining what it would be like to rub the satisfied smirk off her face. Maybe when he is older and wiser he’ll learn to move on, but for now he’s happy being a young fool.

****

She knows what’s happening. Just because she’s in denial doesn’t mean she’s oblivious-- in fact, denial can’t exist without knowledge. 

And Lily knows very much what is happening. 

****

James doesn’t know what’s happening.

He’s hopeful, of course, because hope relies on believing the unknowable and reasoning in the unfathomable. But he soon finds that hope is an insatiable thing, and the more he hopes, the more he doubts. 

He keeps hoping anyway, because he’s starving for any forward progress with Lily Evans. Every moment is enough to have him asking for more, incapable of feeling like it is enough. James doesn’t know what’s happening. All he knows is he’s always been a glutton for punishment and he’s ready to take that risk. 

* * *

**February**

Slughorn thinks it’s a fun Valentine’s Day treat to attempt an Amortentia brew, and Lily Evans has never despised that man more than now as she stares down into the cauldron of tar in front of her. 

“Always knew you’d meet your match in the end, Evans,” Sirius comments, lazily stirring his wand clockwise then counterclockwise in his very-much-not-tar-looking cauldron. “Didn’t think it’d be a love potion, but I can’t really say I’m all that surprised.”

She tries adding another ashwinder egg to lighten up the consistency to no avail. “Shut up.”

“Such mortal follies come for us all. Or did you think you were above this? Did you think you’d never have to actually deal with the messes you’ve made lately?” There’s an unmasked edge to his voice, a double meaning that Lily understands but doesn’t want to acknowledge. He’s been standoffish since term began, and she doesn’t feel like dealing with one of his mysterious moods. James says he just gets that way until he’s out of it, but Lily’s growing tired of his jibes— especially when he seems to only throw them at her, and only about James. Instead of a retort, she adjusts her flame and begins counting her rose thorns. 

She’s not the only one who’s struggling, but she’s not used to not being the best. Slughorn couldn’t hold back his disappointment, making a sort of  _ tsk  _ as he walked away from her station with Sirius. She did notice that Snape hasn’t even attempted to brew. He’s just scribbling away in the corners of his potions book, obviously unconcerned with Slughorn’s disapproval. Mary and Remus make simple small talk while their brews simmer, which is all well and good, until Lily notices that James is already finished. His cauldron emits a beautiful mother-of-pearl smoke, and he’s just sitting staring at it. 

When his eye catches her’s, he doesn’t smile. He just looks at her through the mist, then back down again. Lily tries desperately hard not to overthink that.

“The only way you’ll know is if you ask him yourself,” Sirius says, placing his lid on his nearly finished brew. He leans against the table with a sort of grace only he is capable of. “But you won’t.”

She can’t stop herself from engaging him, even when she knows it’s a bad idea. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit. You’re more curious to know what James smells in his potion than what you would in yours, or else you’d be standing over my cauldron. Instead you keep looking over there like you’re begging him to confess whatever secrets he’s got right here and now in the Dungeons.”

Lily fights a blush rising furiously on her cheeks. Sirius could be a real observant ass sometimes. She tries to move on, tries to get away from this by sprinkling her rose thorns into the boiling mass in front of her. “That’s not a fair assessment, and even if it were, it’d be none of your business.”

“James’ business is my business. For some reason, you’re often James’ business.”

“So?”

“So?” Sirius mocks, leaning in towards her, keeping his voice low so others wouldn’t overhear them. “ _ So _ , Evans, I’ll be the first to say that he doesn’t always think things through. Doesn’t always see things clearly when emotions get involved.” 

The thorns did something, at least. Her potion’s moved on from a tar to a mud-like state, and Lily opts to stir that rather that reply. 

“He’s a prat,” Sirius continues, undeterred by her silence, “and the best person I know.” 

Lily grabs her peppermint and moon stone powder, but Sirius grabs her wrist, forcing her attention on him. In moments like these, Lily fully understands how the Black family could hold onto power through looks and threats alone. 

His gray eyes seem more like steel than she’d ever seen them as he warns, “He’ll burn for you if you let him. You know that, right?”

“I…” Lily’s eyes flicker to James instinctively. He’s there in front of his cauldron, seated still in the busy dungeon as he stares down into his brew. She doesn’t know why she feels such a dread in her heart at the sight, but she does. She takes a deep breath, staring at James rather than at Sirius. “I’d never ask him to.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sirius mutters, moving away from her and back to his own station. “He’s doing it anyway.” 

He takes out his wand, siphoning his Amortentia into his crystal vial with a simple flick of his wrist. With another simple flick, he eviscerates Lily’s potion. 

“What the hell!” Lily jumps, staring at her empty cauldron. That startles James out of his reviere, who turns around to see what’s upset her, but Sirius gives him a jaunty salute, which satisfies him. She turns her glare on Sirius. “You absolute arse, Black, put it back!”

Sirius just shrugs, picking up her sample vial and moving his potion into it. “You wouldn’t have been able to save that, anyway. I’m only trying to help.” 

He eviscerates his own brew. She never saw him smell it, and now she wouldn’t be able to smell Amortentia either.

He hands her crystal vial back to her, saving her grade, but it doesn’t feel generous. The vial in her hand is a clear indication that any notion of perceived control over her life she has is false. 

Lily isn’t a fool. She takes the vial, and Sirius grimaces cruelly.

“If you have to smell a bleeding potion to know what you want, you’re not who I thought you were.”

Lily Evans was screwed. 

\----

The smoke swirling round his face was confirmation enough that any notion of perceived control he’d felt over his life is false. 

James Potter was screwed. 

* * *

**April**

A Sixth Year Ravenclaw accuses her of falsifying her blood status so that people would be more impressed with her. 

“C’mon, Evans, we both know Muggleborns can’t even see Dementors, let alone cast a Patronus charm— even that meezely shield you have. You sure you aren’t half-blood?"

Madame Pince kicks Lily out the library for laughing too loudly, and she keeps laughing all the way to the Common Room, where James and Sirius are huddled in a corner. 

“What’s so funny?” James asks, his attention pulled away from Quidditch strategies for the first time all evening. 

“People,” Lily explains, “who just don't give a damn.”

Sirius smiles widely at her, catching her joke from the first few evenings they spent on the Tower. James shakes his head in bemusement then goes back to pointing the model seeker with his wand, goading him into a new formation to try for the final match in a month, but there's a slight smile on his face because Lily Evans has a laugh like no one else and it’s ringing in his ears for long after she’s gone.

* * *

**May**

It’s their thinking spot, after all, so she isn’t surprised when Sirius Black finds her here after skipping the whole afternoon of classes, skipping dinner, skipping everything. It’s just that so far they’d had an implicit agreement to leave the other be on days like this, so she doesn’t bother to hide her tears or her exhaustion when the door creaks open. What does surprise her is that it isn't Sirius Black who sits down next to her, but James Potter. 

She should be surprised when he puts his arm around her shoulders and she should be surprised that she leans her head against his chest, still crying because everything is real and coming down fast. 

She is not surprised in the least. 

A Third Year Muggleborn lies in the Hospital Wing, recovering from a round of the Cruciatus Curse that someone hit her with when she left the Library late. A Muggle orphanage is burnt to ruins, the charred bodies of children and caretakers plastered across the front page of  _ The Prophet  _ as if it’s just another day, just another massacre, and Lily is tired. Tired of the snide remarks she hears muttered about her, tired of the war, tired of everything. Tired of the wizarding world, tired of her mother and sister. Her hands are crumpled around a letter from Petunia, letting her know that  _ No, it won’t be necessary for you to purchase a bridesmaid gown. You remember Cecile from primary? She’s taking your spot.  _

James doesn’t say anything. He just sits there with his arm around her shoulders as they shake up and down, and she doesn’t say anything, either. Eventually he transfigures a quill from his bag into a handkerchief that she accepts without a word, just a glance up as red eyes meet concerned. His hazel set shines behind his glasses, displaying something there that’s not remotely hidden beyond their surface but right up front, screaming at her to realize the truth of it all. But Lily Evans is tired, and though she isn’t surprised in the least that it is James Potter’s shirt that is covered in her tear stains, she doesn’t want to think about it. 

The world is tough enough without thinking about what’s in front of her, but she knows that something has changed and she may not be able to stop it— may not  _ want  _ to stop it. She convinces herself that is an issue for another day. 

* * *

**June**

“You promised me you’d be impressed, Evans,” James had said when he revealed the tunnel behind Boris the Bewildered which would allegedly take them to Hogsmeade in one piece, letting Sirius and Remus take the lead as Peter and Mary trailed behind obediently. 

“And I promise I will be,” Lily said sweetly, “When you tell me how you manage to do it without being caught so many times.”

“Then I’d be out of secrets for you to be all impressed over.”

Lily didn’t think that was possible.

Mary has since wandered out to meet the Ravenclaw boy from Gobstones Club currently holding her fancy and Lily is left safely in the Common Room with her Firewhiskey-hazy thoughts drifting idly by, shuffling an Exploding Snap deck back and forth while James and Sirius rattle on about whatever has struck their fancy this evening. She doesn’t catch many of the details— it’s hard to keep up with those two— but when Sirius stands for bed, she  _ does _ catch the way he seems to look at James with reproach when he doesn’t follow suit.

“Prongs?” He gestures the dormitory with a tilt of his head, still graceful in his inebriation. When James waves him off, Sirius hesitates before turning heel, scoffing as he did so. 

Amazing how quickly her lazy thoughts seem to stop when it’s just the two of them left stranded on the couch. Slow crackles of embers register in her ears, but Lily feels the full force of the silence between them rise like flood waters, swirling with things yet to come. A dangerous sort of rise in potential, but one that Lily cannot bring herself to care about. Because in the end, this is James Potter next to her, and she’s certainly not going to complain about his company. It is not a wholly uncomfortable silence existing in this limbo place that their friendship has settled in, and Lily is content to shuffle her cards, believing she could be content in this moment forever.

It’s not often she’s wrong.

“I have to tell you something,” James starts, interrupting the silence, the first one to tread the waters between them. Lily slowly stops her shuffle, sitting up straighter, on guard, as an infinite sadness begins to pour into her. He’s looking down, gaze cast to his hand, which Lily realizes is so close to her’s. She knows exactly where this is going and has the simultaneous sensation of flying and sinking at once.

_ Falling _ . The sensation is falling.

She lets him take her the cards, set them gently aside. She lets his big calloused hand engulf her own, filling up with dread and regret. And when she looks at him, really looks at him as he stares back, she sees what’s been swimming behind his eyes, always waiting for her to notice. 

“You have to know by now—“

Lily shakes her head, but he keeps talking. 

“You have to know why I was such a prat in the past. You have to know by now that I—“

“Wait,” she stops him, as she always has. “Wait. Don’t finish that.”

James shakes his head, his hair flopping desperately along with the movement. “I haven’t  _ begun—“ _

“So don’t finish!”

“I can’t even start, that’s the problem, Lily, and if you’d just listen—“

“No!” She lets out, much louder than expected, and it startles them both.

James pulls away from her, and the sensation of falling is faster and worse, much worse without him grounding her. She hates it, hates that she stopped him, that she is the one who made his eyes downcast like that with his head turned so that she can’t fully see his clear distress.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

James gives another jerky shake of his head. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“Just… don’t.” Lily repeats, almost pleading. “Please just wait.”

He’s quiet, almost shameful. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”

“I  _ need _ you to wait longer.”

They look at each other, long and steady, neither one giving up what ground they held. 

“Tell me I’m not imagining this,” he says, so soft and open, so different to what she is used to. “Tell me that I’m working with something here. Tell me honest, Lily.” His hand grabs hers again, holding it there, and she feels that it’s right. “And if you say I’m wrong, I swear to you I’ll never bring it up again.”

He’s begging her to answer, begging honesty from a soul that’s been far too recently scarred by the sting of betrayal to be born so openly to even the kindest of hearts like the one sitting before her.

It shatters something in her, but Lily holds it together, holds his hand in her’s, holds his gaze with her own.

“Wait,” she repeats in a low whisper. “You wait, Potter, and you’ll have an answer.”

James’ hands squeeze her’s almost painfully for a second before he lets go, placing her hand down gently on the couch between them. His eyes are more guarded than before, those emotions that had once been so evident at the surface now subdued behind his glasses. The way the frames reflect some of the orange light of the room haunts her in that moment and in the months following, too. She’s afraid she’s made the wrong move, given too little back of what he was trying to give to her, but she’s wrong. James fixes her with a small smile, a mere shadow of his usual smirk, but Lily knows him well enough to know it’s genuine. 

“Alright, Evans,” he says with no trace of bitterness. “Alright.”

“You... aren’t upset?” 

“No,” James says sincerely, shaking his head again. “I’ve already waited this long. What’s another, say, hour? Day? Week?”

She doesn’t have to roll her eyes for him to know that’s exactly what she’d like to do, and then he laughs, filling up the room, filling up her mind in a way that makes it hard to stay stern. But something pulls at her conscience, uneasy and unsatisfied. 

“I can’t say when I can give you an answer,” Lily confesses, staring at her lap. “I don’t know how long I can ask you to wait, so if you get tired of it… if you get bored of me… I understand. And it’s okay.”

He doesn’t say anything at first. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all, even though she’s waiting in long silence for him to do so. James, always a believer in action over words, choses action.

She sees the way his knees shift, sees how her knees shift towards him too. Feels the imperceivable motion of him scooting towards her just as much as she feels the motion of  _ her _ scooting towards  _ him _ , which should be impossible because this has the word  _ mistake! _ written all over it in bold-face letters.

But all he does is take her hand. Anticlimactic, Lily feels, but acceptable. Besides, this is still a new thing, a new ground of comfort and intimacy she’s been avoiding.

It isn’t desperate like before. He’s not holding on to her hand like it’s his last grip on reality. It’s so unbelievably gentle, so unbearably soft the way his rough Chaser hands can take her own and tug her ever so slightly towards him, bringing her closer to the fire in his eyes that she knows isn’t a mere reflection of the fireplace in the Common Room. 

He’s just holding her hand. It shouldn’t matter the way he brings it up to his lips and brushes her knuckles with his breath. It shouldn’t matter that she laces her fingers through his but maybe it’s starting to matter that their knees are touching now and Merlin it  _ should not matter  _ how he brings up his free hand to replace her hair behind her ear and how it makes her breath hitch. But it does.

Everything matters to her when it comes to James Potter, especially the way he’s looking at her. 

“You want the truth, Evans?” He asks, voice barely above a whisper, “I’m damn tired of waiting. Patience has never really been a virtue of mine. Never saw much point in it until I learned to wait for you.”

Their faces are so close that she has to put her eyes completely downcast to look at his lips in the same way that his eyes keep darting down too. 

“I’m not worth it,” she hears herself say. Petunia’s face flashes in her mind, Severus’ angry slur rings in her ears. “Disappointment always follows.”

Is he getting closer to her, or is she the one who's leaning in?

“Here’s a rare time you’re wrong, Evans.”

“It’s true.”

A small shake of his head, one that only emphasizes just how much his breath tickles her face and makes her cheeks heat up. “I don’t care.”

“You should.”

“I’ve never been one for following warning signs.”

“Good point,” Lily whispers back, frozen there, centimeters away from his lips--

And he pulls away. 

In one eternal moment, James pulls his face up from hers, though his hand is still cupped round her cheek.

“I meant what I said,” he tells her with dark, honest eyes. “I’ll wait. We can… finish this when you’ve got that answer for me, yeah?” 

Lily, dumbfounded and confused, just sits there. 

“What?”

James  _ chuckles, _ as if he’s the picture of composure. In fact, it’s the fact that he isn’t a pile of confused, emotional goop like her that brings her out of her shock. Kind of sort of infuriates her, actually, and Lily’s cheeks turn a bright red as she furrows her eyebrows and opens her mouth— and he laughs,  _ again. _

“Well, I guess we’ll both have to wait for your answer.” And then he does the next worst thing. James Potter stands up and places a kiss right there on the top of her head with a quiet  _ Night _ ,  _ Evans _ , before he manages to stroll ever so casually towards the stairs, leaving her there, staring. 

“Hold on just a second, Potter—“

He doesn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. “I’ll see you over break!”

Lily finds it in her to collect herself, if only out of spite for the insufferable smirk she knows is across his face. 

“Like hell you will,” she cuts back defiantly before he can climb up the stairwell. “You’ve never even managed to send a bloody owl to my home, last time I checked.”

James turns around, his eyebrow quipped up in a way that only serves to rile Lily up in more ways that one. 

“I haven’t?” He shrugs, not in the least bit concerned, giving away just enough in his tone to have her suspicious.

“What’re you on about?”

“Nothing at all. Are Wednesday’s good for you? I’m rather fond of them.”

“Weren’t you leaving? I liked it better when you were leaving.”

“Only cause you enjoyed the view,” James smiles, big and wide, before he was thusly forced to duck away from the cushion that had gone hurtling towards his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two more parts left! they're generally shorter than sixth year. also in janurary lily is essentially that one LOTR meme with frodo talkin' to gandalf


	3. Summer, '77

**July**

Lily Evans finds herself in the company of James Potter at an unprecedented rate. Almost inexplicably, he wanders into the small grocery that she’s worked at since Fifth Year when her mother needed extra income. He’s got a picnic basket full of sandwiches and sugar mice and he manages to convince her to sit outside and join him for lunch.

She drives him around in her dad’s old car and they decide to make some needed “repairs” on the dingy metal thing, adding both charms and charm to the hunk of junk. Sirius shows up one day, looking inappropriately good in such a seasonably inappropriate leather jacket, and does most of the spell work and tinkering. 

“I’ve been thinking about getting a motorbike for a while now,” he says from beneath the frame of the car. Lily flicks the finished joint at him. 

"I've been thinking you're nutters for a while now," she counters, and James laughs, a big whole sound that resonates in the air long after he's gone. 

****

At first he wonders if Sirius decided to spike his pumpkin juice with one of his dad’s experiments again, because the last time that happened, he hallucinated for three days straight. But that can’t be right, because Sirius has been visiting his uncle, and James doesn’t think his mother would have done so.

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe he’s finally lost the last of his marbles. Maybe this is a hallucination after all, because there’s no other explanation for why he would be seeing what he does across the way, sitting alone on a swing set, back to them, staring at the ground.

“Lily?” 

“Hmm?” Her nose is buried in whatever novel she’s chosen for today, legs tucked under her in the little lawn chair she found. Sirius may be visiting his uncle, but that didn’t stop James from stopping by her garage to see the car.

No. To see her. Neither one of them believed that excuse and neither one of them minded, either. She’d already had a pitcher of lemonade out when he strolled down the lane from his usual Apparation point.

James shifts a little uncomfortably in his lawn chair, feeling the weak plastic move about beneath him. He sets down the Muggle wireless he’s been flipping stations through. Apprehension trickles down his neck, somehow more uncomfortable than the sticky heat that hangs in the air about them. His eyes glance at Lily one last time before his hand itches towards his back pocket for his wand.

“What’s Snape doing across the street?”

Lily’s head jerks up, immediately locking onto the back of Severus Snape’s head. Inexplicably, she goes right back to her novel as if nothing were out of sorts, and James feels that apprehension grow larger and larger. 

They don’t talk about Snape. For the whole past school year, they didn’t talk about him— which James was thankful for. He knows Snape is a sore spot with Lily because of the incident at the Lake and more. He knows very little about Lily’s friendship with Snape— whether it was limited to Potions partners and Library trips or if it was something more. All he knows is that they were friends and now they’re not.

Right? 

So he really has no explanation for why Lily doesn’t question Severus Snape sitting in a beaten up swing set across the street. She offers no clarity and he’s trying not to let it bother him. 

“Lily.”

“I was really hoping he’d stop doing that,” she mutters quietly.

“‘Stop doing’? As in, he’s done this before?”

Lily looks at him through the corner of her eye, visibly uncomfortable.

“He has,” is all she offers up, and what little self-control he has in him breaks. 

“Snape is _stalking_ you and you didn’t tell me?” James stands up, rolling his neck in the same habit he has before Quidditch games. “Merlin’s beard, Evans, that’s something to-”

“Oh, would you calm down? And put your wand away, git, before a Muggle sees it.” Lily reaches over and yanks his t-shirt to force him back down into the chair, which James obeys with a glare. She just rolls her eyes, picking up her book. “Severus isn’t stalking me. He’s my neighbor, and he’s as much a right to stroll about that park as anyone else.”

She says it with such ridiculous authority and finality that James almost laughs, as if that were a satisfying explanation in the least. “You’re really telling me that Sniv— Snape just happens to live in the same place as you? This is no Wizard’s community, the chance of that is… well, I don’t know the actual chance, but it’s gotta be astronomically small.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Lily bites, eyes flaring up, but in the next moment her shoulders sag a little bit. “He’s about two blocks over. He’s always been around.”

James knows he should drop it. He knows that. That part of him who can’t resist a fight against Snape and who has always been jealous in a sad, petulant way when it comes to Lily's attentions is larger than he realized. When Lily tries to delve back into her novel, he just can’t help himself. 

“So… he’s been here before? You’ve hung out over breaks before?”

“Er,” she stalls. “Since before, actually. Since we were… nine, maybe?”

“Oh.” That’s news to him. Big, confusing news to him, because a nine year old, knobbly knee-d Snape running around with a little Lily Evans is completely incongruent with the twisted wannabe Death Eater he is now. The image that plays through his mind is as disturbing as it is sad. He takes it all in, the small park across the way, the forgotten state of Lily’s home and the rest of the street, and what little he knows about her cold sister and distant mother.... And he gets it. A little bit. He gets how two lonely, special kids in this lonely, sad area would have revelled in finding each other.

But that’s where his understanding stops, because they’re seventeen now and nothing is the same as it was then. Lily’s still staring at him, a blank expression on her face, giving him the freedom to drop it and move on or fight.

And, well, James has always been a bit of an idiot.

“But you  _ aren’t  _ friends now, he  _ shouldn’t  _ be there—“

“Leave it alone,” Lily says in that voice that _dares_ him to test her. Issue is, he usually does. “He’s not bothering anyone and that’s public property, even if it should be used by a kid and not a grown wizard.”

“He’s bothering  _ you _ ! Don’t fool yourself into thinking I don’t know you, Lily, because I do. You’re obviously uncomfortable with him-”

“Which you are making worse, if you must know-"

“I’ll go talk to him, yeah? He won’t come back.”

Her eyes flash dangerously. “Don’t fight my battles for me. Don’t you dare.”

“I’m only trying to help,” he narrows his eyes back, but Lily has never viewed James Potter with a wand in his hand and Severus Snape in the mix as helpful.

“I don’t need your help!” Lily shoulders heave as she slams her book shut with a sharp  _ snap,  _ and the sound fits her expression. James thinks she’s ready for another round, but all Lily does is stand up and retreat into the house, leaving him there in the garage wondering how he managed to pull out his wand out again without noticing.

He slumps down, running his fingers through his hair, and feels regret begin to settle in the air where apprehension once hung. But just as he decides it’s time to retreat home as she did, a hand settles on his shoulder.

Lily looks down on him, sighing. “We were having a nice time. I don’t want to ruin it. Can we please just ignore him?”

Her eyes bore into his and he melts. Of course he does. He knows this is a mark of change, because a younger Lily and younger James would have fought and left it at that, and his heart swells with appreciation for her patience. James squeezes her hand on his shoulder.

“Alright, Evans.”

“Alright, Potter,” she smiles, and he does too. She tosses her hair over her shoulder and holds out a hand for him to accept. 

He does.

“C’mon. There’s a pond not far from here I want to show you.”

“I was warned about beautiful creatures leading men to their death in waters, Evans. Is this one of those situations?”

James earns a good shove for that as they turn the corner, the park behind them. Lily points out different parts of the faltering neighborhood infrastructure, joking about continuing his Muggle Studies education.

Neither of them remember to let go of the other’s hand.

****

“That boy was over again.”

Lily ignores her, pretending to read her novel, but really just thinking about how her faint sunburn can’t explain why the place on her cheek that James kissed good-bye seems to be on fire compared to the rest of her.

“Answer me, Lily. That boy was back, wasn’t he?”

“What does it matter, Petunia?”

“I don’t like it,” her sister snaps, wrapping around the room so she’s standing in front of Lily, harder to ignore. 

“You don’t know him,” is all Lily says. She doesn’t want to fight. It’s always a fight with Petunia.

“I don’t need to know him,” Petunia sits on the coffee table, cornering Lily. “If he’s one of your lot, I don’t need to know him.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

“For your own good. He shouldn’t come round here.”

“I don’t see how any of this is your business.”

“Does Mum know?”

Lily doesn’t answer.

“Thought so,” Petunia says primly. Smugly. 

“You aren’t going to tell her,” Lily warns.

“Well why not? You’re so secretive about your precious world and—“

“There are things you don’t want to know—“

“Are there?” Petunia’s eyes lock onto her’s, harsh. Calculating. Like this is what she really wanted to know, not anything about James. She wants to know what more than a boy Lily has been hiding from her. Lily should have seen this coming. Petunia's nose for secrets and information for her own use is impressive if nothing else. 

Lily finds herself stumbling. “You know,” she says pathetically, “Like what part of a goat is good for curing poison. What frogspawn is great for, what—“

“Fine,” Petunia stands, cutting Lily off. “Keep your secrets. I don’t care. But I don’t want you seeing anyone from your lot and I don’t want them here of all places, and I mean it.”

Lily crossed her arms, all good mood from the walk around the pond forgotten, kisses on cheeks wasted in the sourness of Petunia’s gaze. “That’s rich, telling me who to date," she bites back, "coming from _you_.”

She struck a nerve. 

“At least he’s  _ safe,”  _ Petunia all but hisses out. “At least he has a job and he loves me. He’s  _ respectable,  _ not that you ever cared about that.”

“Is that all that you want from life?” Lily asks, looking up to her big sister, ignoring her jibe. That's what Lily wanted to know as much as Petunia wanted to know about the war. “Is that really all?”

“What would you know about what I want from life?” Petunia storms from the room, and Lily thinks it’s over. At least their fighting hasn’t woken their mother, whose door remains mercifully shut. When Petunia doesn’t come back to the living room for round two, Lily tries to read again, but her heart isn’t in it.

“I’m going to Vernon’s,” Lily hears, and when she turns her head, Petunia has a bag packed and is standing at the door. “While I’m gone, think about who you’re leaving behind when you go to school, Lily. Think about Mum. She wants you home, not off with another freak.”

Petunia slams the door behind her and she’s gone.

* * *

**August**

James Potter is standing inside her kitchen, trying to figure out how someone as bright and shining as Lily Evans came from something as dull as this. 

He’s never actually been in her house before. They spent time together in the garage or outside her work, but he’s never seen the inside of her house. It feels like the opposite of a magical tent— smaller and somehow more uninviting on the inside than the unkempt outside. 

Her sister ( _ how  _ is that her sister?) keeps sending him sidelong glances, her eyes narrowed and criticism and her lips pursed as if she’s trying to keep her mouth shut. She’s folding envelopes methodically, examining each paper and each corner in great detail. Lily is somewhere else inside the small house, arguing with her mother in heated voices that don’t get completely muffled by the closed door. The clock on the wall ticks loudly and James still can’t figure out how Lily, so full of bright, vibrant love, managed to keep herself sane in the tense silence that is starting to suffocate him. He pulls out his wand to tap against his leg because it’s been fifteen minutes since he showed up to her garage to pick her up before meeting the others at the Leaky Cauldron. He found a frail blonde woman waiting for him in a bath robe rather than Lily in her Muggle jean skirt. 

Apparently, bad first impressions with the Evans’ was a curse that applied to not one but  _ three _ women, and it’s now been twenty minutes since he’s come around, and there’s no sign of Lily emerging from whatever spat she and her mother were on about. 

“Put that thing away,” Petunia snaps, pulling his focus away from the closed door. Petunia sports a suit he can't picture Lily ever donning, a smart and suffocating number that he assumes Muggles find respectable. Lily's never really cared for respectability, which he respects. 

“I’m sorry?” Confused, James sits completely up and still, hesitant to move further down Petunia’s bad side.

“That  _ thing, _ ” she repeats as if he’s dull, drawing her full focus away from the wedding invitations to him for the first time. Her eyes are nothing like Lily’s. She jerks her head tersely, glancing down at his hands. 

“Er, my wand?” 

“Yes,” Petunia all but hisses. “The window is just there. Someone could see.”

James looks around the room. The window Petunia is referencing is small and curtained, closed off to any part of the outside world. 

“Oh, it’s fine. We're of age now, we can do magic outside of school,” he says, but he tucks away his wand, trying to salvage what he can of Petunia's opinion of him.

“Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t say  _ magic _ ,” Petunia’s voice drops down to a scathing whisper, and James obligingly sits in silence.

It makes sense, now, why Lily Evans bleeds magic and goodness. She knows what it’s like to be deprived of that right in every place she’s been, both at home and at school. 

So he sits there and waits in the suffocating silence with Petunia, the faint sounds of argument coming from where Lily and her mother are fighting, and though it makes sense, James can’t figure out how someone as bright and shining as Lily Evans came from this. 

****

“That bloke outside is looking for you.”

The girl says it with some level of annoyance, and Lily looks up to see a dark-haired teenager about her age in a stylish blouse and bell-bottoms. Her pretty face is pulled down into a frown, but there’s something familiar about her that makes Lily think they went to primary together. She can’t be sure, though, and before Lily can ask, the girl turns to point out the window.

“Him. There,” she says before walking away in a huff, leaving Lily to see that it’s James in the window, a giant grin plastered across his face. He’s wearing the Muggle clothes they found for him in a thrift shop earlier this summer, and she takes a point of pride that they look so fitting on him. The sun illuminates his black hair, and Lily understands why the girl was so annoyed that James had taken no interest in her. 

She leaves the five unboxed fruit crates where they lie without any issue, promising Mr. McDough that she will  _ be right back, not even five minutes, I swear _ , before meeting James outside in the blaring sun. She should be annoyed that he’s interrupted her at work but she can’t bring herself to care. 

“I stopped by your house and may have offended your sister— again,” James confesses, his grin falling slightly in guilt, his arm tucked behind his back. “Said something about ‘my lot’ not knowing how to find a hairdresser. What did she mean by that?”

“It’s no matter,” Lily brushes off with a wave of her hand. “Why’d you go to my house?”

“Well, you don't normally work on Wednesdays. I thought you’d be there.”

Lily blinks. He’s right, of course. She doesn’t work Wednesday’s but she doesn’t feel like James knowing that fact should make her heart flutter a bit.

“Hogwarts letters came today,” he tells her, that smile still plastered across his face. It’s contagious.

“So they’ve let you come back to school? How merciful of Dumbledore,” Lily jokes. James doesn’t respond, he just extends his arm out to reveal the school barn owl perched there. Lily nearly smacks him. “You  _ do  _ realize that carrying an owl on your arm in the middle of the day is not normal here, right?”

He rolls his eyes. “And leave the poor thing to wait at your place with Petunia glaring at it? Just take the letter, Evans.”

Why James Potter needs her to read the book list so thoroughly is beyond her, but she tears open the parchment anyway. A badge falls into her hand, the words “Head Girl” shining back up at her in gold lettering.

It only takes a moment of registration for Lily to start jumping up and down, tears in her eyes.  _ She did it _ , she proved herself and it doesn’t matter that some students glare at her and call her names because she’s Head Girl, dammit, and she deserves it.

James laughs, his eyes alight as he watches Lily celebrate her success because she deserves this and so much more. She’s laughing and crying, wiping her eyes when she asks, “Is this why you’re here? But how did you know?”

“Read the letter,” he says, and she turns her attention to the parchment in her hands. She reads the congratulations from Dumbledore and McGonagall and reaches the last sentence, which lets her know that ‘ _ James Potter of Gryffindor House will serve as Head Boy.’ _

And just like that she gives another scream of surprise and delight, throwing her arms around his shoulders that disturbs the owl, which hoots and flies out of harm’s way as the two of them spin around the storefront, limbs and laughter in the air with the promise of things to come, laced with the understanding of things already there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry its late! ive been traveling & seeing friends & family. next part is the last one! lemme know what you think. im honestly still tinkering with the last bit-- all what i've been posted has been done for a while. i just hate endings. 
> 
> also, i think about petunia a lot, and about how she kept harry in the end (obviously abused him, but kept him-- why? what's her ideas about loyalty and family? i cant get a read on her character because whatever family piety she has is incredibly warped).


	4. Seventh Year

**September**

It's her Seventh Year and everything is going to shit. 

Lily doesn’t really walk alone in the corridors anymore. Someone is always with her, and usually it is one of the boys. It’s the same for Mary, who keeps her head up high until she can’t. 

It wasn’t obvious, what was happening, until it was. It seemed like Peter just always happened to want to walk out of Muggle Studies with her now, and that Remus was also coming into the Great Hall for breakfast at the same time that she did.

"You've never been an early riser, Remus. Change of heart?"

He stifles a yawn. "Something like that:" 

Sirius cracks first, mostly because he doesn't like to bullshit or sugarcoat things.

“We lost the Map,” he confesses one evening when she finds him waiting outside the dungeons. She’d stayed brewing later than she had intended to and jumped when she saw him move out of the shadows— for a moment, she thought he was his brother. She smiles when she realizes it’s the Gryffindor Black and notices he has his wand drawn. Looking down, she realizes that her wand is drawn, too. Lily always has her wand drawn now.

"Long story short, it used to be easier for us to watch your back— don’t look at me like that, Evans,  _ I’m _ not the lunatic who started it— but we learned some interesting facts about our fellow students before Filch got in the way. Did you know you’re being stalked by Mulciber?”

Lily stops walking, letting that news sink in.

“I hate this,” Lily hisses and she feels tears prickle at her eyes because she is tired and frustrated and sick to her core, not even safe in the castle she calls home. “You should have told me earlier. I'm not some helpless a child.”

Sirius shrugs but doesn’t dismiss what she said. “Prongs didn’t want to worry you, since it could have all been coincidence. Regardless, though. That Head Girl badge isn’t going to protect you from everything. You may be good, Evans, but even you know it's just not smart to go it alone now."

Lily couldn’t disagree. And having Sirius by her side, or Remus or Peter or James, usually helps quell the abuses she would hear if she were alone. 

More often than not, it is James Potter who accompanies her through the hallways. They spend a considerable amount of time together alone in the corridors, and Lily can’t begin to think about what she would do without him.

Which is why she doesn’t have an answer for him. 

Of course, she knows what she’d like that answer to be. She’d like for things to be simple, she’d love for them to just be a pair of teenagers who fancy each other a stupid amount and she’d like to just go for it. But they’re not just a pair of teenagers, and this isn’t a simple time. He’s got Quidditch scouts coming to observe his practices, Head Boy duties to perform, N.E.W.T. level classes to survive, and he manages to do it all. Lily doesn’t want to admit that she feels like she’s falling apart at the seams, doesn’t want to make herself vulnerable to anyone because her strength is the only thing she has. She’s got Ministry applications to fill out, Head Girl duties to perform, and N.E.W.T. level classes to survive on top of the growing blood tensions in the castle. 

That doesn’t stop her from imagining what it would be like to take that leap, to tell him what she’s felt for a while now, and they could be together, simple as that. Because James Potter is the only one who’s been able to dismantle some of the strongest walls she’s built around herself and she’s ready to let him in, making things better through the simplest and sweetest of solutions.

Lily Evans is no fool. She knows things won’t get better just like that. She knows that things will get worse, much worse, before they get better. But she forgets these facts when he smiles at her, and when he laughs, she thinks she may just be lost forever.

* * *

**October**

James Potter has detention and won’t tell her why. 

The corridors are cold and so are his eyes as he stares back in her own, which are narrowed in anger. She didn’t mean to fight with him and it certainly wasn’t her intention when she finally managed to track him down after he missed classes this afternoon. It’s the biggest fight they’d had since Fifth Year. She’s the one who started it but they both live to regret it. 

“It’s nothing important,” he tries to shrug it off, but Lily grabs him by the arm, keeping him there instead of walking off like he’d intended. 

“Don’t  _ lie  _ to me, James,” she cuts sharply. It doesn’t hurt him, at least not physically. “McGonagall looked downright pissed when I saw her this afternoon. What happened?”

James meets her eye, and he sees concern there. There’s hurt, too, because she knows he’s hiding something from her. Her hand is still curled around his arm, her eyes flicking across his face, looking for an explanation. She finds the answer on his jaw, her hand dropping the grip on his arm to brush her fingers beneath his chin, where a poorly healed welt stands out against his flesh. 

“Who started it?”

James won't look at her and that’s answer enough. He won't look her in the eye to see judgement or disappointment because he can't take himself back to that place where Lily Evans isn’t proud of him. She knows exactly who James fought but she has no idea why, even if she thinks she does. 

“Who started it?” She repeats, dreading the answer she already knows. “Who cast the first spell?”

It takes him a moment to respond, staring above her head towards the dark corridor rather than her face, and that’s pissing Lily off. 

“ _ James." _

“I did,” he confesses, “but, Lily, listen—“

“Unbelievable,” she pulls her hands off him and James resists the urge to grab them in his, to stop this fight before it starts, to just bring his lips to hers and make everything okay. Things can’t be solved as simply and sweetly as that and he knows it, but it would be much preferable to hearing Lily Evans spit out, “I thought you were better than this.” 

“Don’t be so simplistic about it, Evans, these are  _ Slytherins  _ we’re talking about—“

“You can't keep picking fights with people you don't like! This is just like Fifth Year, all over again—“

“—this is  _ nothing  _ like Fifth Year considering there’s definitely something Dark about the cut on Remus’  _ neck— _ ”

“—you’re Head Boy and getting detentions like you’re fifteen again is  _ outrageous _ —”

“—they should be getting expulsions for Merlin’s sake—”

“—you should be setting the example! You should be above the fray—”

“Above the fray?” James visibly scoffs, rolling his eyes at her. “Please, Lily, this isn’t something dumb like Quidditch. We’re talking about kids who get off on shit like what’s been in  _ The Prophet  _ lately _.  _ Don’t tell me to be above the fucking ‘fray’ when you of all people know exactly who they really are.”

“Maybe so!” She digs her heels even further into the ground. “But we’re still in school. We aren’t out there yet. We don’t need to do more fighting than we already have coming.” 

He can see the suggestion of tears well up in her eyes and he tries not to cave, but he knows her well enough to hear the fear behind her anger in that moment. He knows enough to know her concern is real. He knows she doesn’t want to fight the war here and now, but why she finds it so easy to fight  _ him  _ just feels wrong.  _ Is  _ wrong. 

Curse it all. Curse the day he realized he’d never be the same for looking into those eyes. 

“Snape was making threats about you, okay?” James runs a hand through his hair, revealing what he had planned on hiding. He knew Lily didn’t like to hear about his age old rivalry with Snape and he knew that he was fueling a fight he didn’t want, but Lily had to see this new reality. Snivellus still irks the hell out of him, but it isn’t because of his odd appearance or study habits. He’s nose deep in the Dark Arts and Lily Evans still doesn’t want to acknowledge that, so James continues. “It wasn’t _just_ Avery, it wasn’t _just_ Mulciber, it was Snape, and something in me just snapped. I don’t know what else to say other than the fact that I’m not going to do nothing when it comes to you!”

“It’s not up to you to defend me!” She throws her hands up, anger and frustration flaring inside her like she hasn’t felt before, which is probably why she hits as hard as she does next. “This is exactly what I begged you not to do! This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen!”

He scoffs, trying to walk away again, tired of it all. “I didn’t want this either, Lily, but at least  _ I’m _ not pretending Snape never existed in the first place so I don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of him.”

That hits way too close to home, as he knew it would. She tries to stop feeling like she’d been slapped. 

“You don’t get to do this,” Lily hisses, putting herself in front of him, blocking his exit. “You don’t get to pretend like this had to do with anything more than your own ego wanting to get into it. I asked you something and you clearly didn’t think it worthwhile to be  _ inconvenienced  _ by anything I wanted. It’s my fault for ever thinking that I could be more important to you than your pride.”

His eyes flash in a way she’s never seen them, suddenly dark and foreboding when he asks quietly, “Is that really how you think I feel about you? Is this really how low you think of me?” 

“You’ve certainly only proved me right,” Lily bites out scathingly, knowing she’s being cruel, knowing she was being unreasonable, but finding it quite impossible to stop.

He opens his mouth for a quick retort that he swallows, controlling himself before he said something to make things even worse, though he can’t see how things could be helped, either. James takes an agitated deep breath, his hand grabbing his hair. 

“So I’m just supposed to let them talk about you like that?” He shakes his head in disbelief, her words still echoing in his mind and he feels defeated. Nothing has changed, in the end. He’s still completely taken by Lily Evans and he still isn’t enough for her. When he meets Lily’s eyes again, he finds the same defensive look she wore years ago, before he’d been able to break through to her. 

James sighs again, feeling frayed. “Look. I'm not going to just stand to the side while Slytherins are calling you a- a  _ Mudblood  _ and a blood whore, okay?”

“It’s my name. I can defend it myself-- something you've given me too little chance to do lately." He looks confused for only a moment before she continues, "Sirius told me about the Map and about Mulciber when I should have heard it from _you."_ She shakes her head, tired of it all, not giving him the chance to defend himself. “It's _my_ name, James. I don’t have the luxury to care about what everybody thinks about me.”

“Well, I care!” he struggles to maintain whatever composure he still has left and doubts he’s successful. "I care enough about you to give a damn about what people say, especially when it’s going to affect your safety!” Lily starts to make a noise of protest but he keeps going, he has to make her understand. “I cast the first spell, alright? But Snape started it, he goaded me on, he’s  _ jealous— _ “

“Oh, grow up,” she tells him and it hurts, because there he is, back in the place where Lily Evans can’t be proud of him. They’re back to a place where Lily can find it in her heart to forgive Slytherins before forgiving him. He had been living in a beautiful state of denial for the last few months, pretending like she had already given him her answer, pretending like maybe they were something more when reality was simply that he was nothing more than a fool.

They were both fools, but at least James can see his folly now so clearly laid before him. Lily can’t see past her own anger and prejudice against him to see the truth. 

She’s afraid to acknowledge her past, failing to keep Severus out of trouble. She’s afraid to acknowledge her future, which is getting into nothing but trouble with James Potter at her side. So she settles into what she used to know, which is fighting and running away from her feelings about the boy in front of her. 

Lily opens her mouth to take another stab at James, but he beats her to it. The cold look of disdain on his face is something she never thought him capable of. She takes a physical step back as he narrows his eyes at her, adopting the same cover of disinterest she’d seen so practiced on Sirius’ face. 

“I  _ have  _ grown up,” James says evenly. “I’ve grown enough to accept who I used to be and who I am now. And I thought you did too, but I guess I was wrong.” He almost laughs when he says, “I thought things were finally different between us, but I guess I was  _ really  _ wrong on that front, huh?”

Here’s how it goes. James walks away.

That’s why Lily Evans is alone in the Astronomy Tower that evening, too distracted by her tears of frustration and confusion to hear any person creak open the door. She doesn't hear the rustle of robes as he moves his wand to take aim at her. She doesn't hear the muttered stunning spell that leaves her conscious but immobile where she was once sitting against a wall but is now splayed on the floor. Vulnerable. She can't see who's there, can’t see anything besides the feet that circle her body. She can't see his face when he presses his hand down on her neck to steady himself as he grabs her arm and repeatedly pierces a silver blade along her skin, quick and neat. What she can feel is the pressure of his fingers digging into the final long cut, she can feel the blood that's flowing out, and finally the swift kick to her ribs before she passes out. 

So after she’d been found by a Fifth Year prefect on patrol, Lily didn’t really expect to see James during her stay in the Hospital Wing the next day. She does see Mary, who tells Lily that it’s time for the two of them to go home— to tuck away their wands until it is safe for Muggleborns again. Mary knows Lily won’t but cries anyway, terrified for the both of them.

Remus, looking sickly as always, occupies another bed in the Hospital Wing. He keeps her company when Mary leaves for class. 

Sirius and Peter come by, too, though Sirius pretends like he brought extra chocolate frogs by mistake when she ripped one from his hand. When she shows Sirius the newly etched word on her arm—  _ dirty—  _ he barely flinches. What he does instead is hold her gaze, his gray eyes hard and proud as steel when he says, “Some scars are worth wearing.”

She doesn’t ask the boys about James and he doesn’t show up. She can’t blame him, considering this is about as lousy as how she imagines she made him feel yesterday anyway. 

James can’t come see her on account of the fact that he’s been holed up in Dumbledore’s office with McGonagall, yelling about expelling every suspected Slytherin for good measure. Dumbledore is calmly telling him that he can't write off students because of their last names, but James doesn’t really give a shit about mercy right now, considering that Lily Evans’ blood is still smeared across the stone wall, the word  _ warning _ spelled out in dried, rusty red.

James can’t go see Lily Evans because Remus Lupin showed up in the boys' dormitory last night wearing just a nightshirt when he should have been in the Hospital Wing recovering from the night before. James can’t go see Lily Evans because he knew exactly what happened before Remus Lupin, wearing just a nightshirt, opened his mouth. James can’t go see Lily Evans because James tried to break into the Slytherin Common Room, which is another reason why he’s holed up in Dumbledore’s office with McGonagall. He’s fighting with them to ignore the panic that’s in his chest and the nagging feeling that he’s failed as a Gryffindor because he doesn’t think he has the courage to see Lily hurt because he wasn’t there.

****

Lily Evans is a light sleeper, so she is surprised when it takes her a while to wake up to the low buzzing noise in the Wing. James Potter is seated next to her, catching a releasing his old Snitch in his hand. She wants to smile at the sight, but the effort hurts after too many hours since her last elixir. They used to fight so often because of that Snitch, a cycle of him showing off and getting told off. Now he holds it fluttering in his hands, curling his fingers around it like a fragile bird. 

“Hey,” she murmurs. His head snaps up, eyes locking onto hers, tired but sharp and bright. When she reaches out her hand towards him, he obeys, taking it in his. She hears the Snitch  _ clink  _ gently on the floor, forgotten. 

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispers, needing him to hear the apology she’s wanted to say all day, “I didn't mean—“

“ _ Don’t, _ ” he whispers back gruffly, not exactly looking her in the eye. “Don't.”

“This isn’t your fault, James,” she says, but he doesn’t seem to hear her. His shoulders are hunched, defeated— a look that is oddly out of place on James Potter. The dim light around them from the one lit candle casts a glow about the area, its shadow making him appear even smaller than his slight frame actually is. He encases her hand with his own dark calloused set, clutching her ice cold fingers up, resting his forehead against the intertwined fists. He still isn’t looking at her, and Lily tries not to get upset over that, but she’s waited all day to see him and he won’t even look her in the eye. They sit like this, quiet, as his shoulders move unsteadily up and down, giving the only indication that he is anything but the calm, quiet boy he’s trying to be.

“James.” She starts again, more forceful than she had been earlier. “This isn’t your fault. Don’t play the noble prat on my behalf.”

“I shouldn’t have left you. I  _ knew _ something like this was going to happen and I just—”

“You can’t have known—“

“I  _ should _ have known, I should have stuck around and now you’re here and it’s all because I couldn’t—“ He won’t look at her and she feels his fingers squeeze tightly around hers, repeating himself. “I should have known. I should have been there—”

“I shouldn’t have said those things about you,” Lily cuts him off, her voice rough from the small bruises on her neck and from the potions that Madame Pomfrey had forced down her throat to help with the blood loss. “I didn’t give you a chance to explain. I’m sorry. I didn't mean any of it.”

James tries to wave her off, to throw away her apology. “I don't care, Lily, it's fine, it's nothing.”

“It's not!” She tries to interject with dignity, but her voice cracks from soreness. Lily carries on anyway. “It's not nothing. You didn't deserve any of what I said.”

He still has her hand in his, but it seems like slow motion when he sets it gently down on the cot, pulling his hands out of her reach and out of her sight. Her hand is cold without his. 

“Don't say things you don't mean just because you think I can't handle the truth,” James says, without any bitterness. “You were pretty clear on how you felt. I think I know your answer.”

“Look at me,” Lily orders, and for the first time since she woke up with him there, James holds her gaze steady. His eyes glow in the dimness, the gold hazel mixing with the candlelight behind his glasses. “I mean what I’m saying  _ now _ . You’re my best friend,” Lily confesses, and it’s something she’s never thought to herself before but something that she knows is true the moment it escapes from her lips. “I can’t do this without you.”

He doesn't respond at first, his expression almost unreadable until he nods once at her, a jerky shake of his head that’s followed by the slightest shifting of his weight and re-slouching of his shoulders, relief rather than defeat creeping back into his muscles. He sighs, hand reaching into jet-black hair to ruffle what doesn’t need to be ruffled, and she watches, tired and in pain as the shock of the last twenty-four hours wears off, finally feeling safe enough to feel again. 

“Can you just—” her voice shakes now, with tears building in the back of her throat, partly from relief that he’s here, and partly from the fear she doesn’t want to admit to. “Can you please just keep holding my hand?”

James obliges, although to him it is a selfish act that reminds him that she’s here, and that regardless of any deeper feelings, he’s the only one she’d let see her like this, the only one she’d let comfort her like this. 

They are back to where they started, both of them ready to surrender to the exhaustion of it all until Lily is asleep with tear stains down her cheeks. James has a few, too, when he finally picks his Snitch up off the ground, catching it in one hand while Lily keeps his other one hostage. He lets the Snitch’s wings keep time, wondering how many more nights they would be spending like this, worried and disconnected from the world as it turns around them. 

* * *

**November**

He’s sitting at a table in the Library away from where Madame Pince usually prowls when she finds him, books and parchment and ink wells accumulating in a heap on the table. He doesn’t look up from the tomb in his hands when she sits primly across from him with a bit of a smile pulling at her lips. 

“I have an answer for you,” Lily says, but he’s still looking at the book. 

“For Runes? Brilliant, I’ve been stuck for an hour.”

“Not for Runes, no,” Lily tuts, pulling the text away from him. James tugs it back from her without even a look of reproach, immediately going back to his work. 

“If it’s for Potions then it’ll have to wait, I’ve got to be on the Pitch in an hour and I really need to finish this.”

“Not for Potions,” she says in a sing-song voice that James, up to his neck in incomplete assignments from last week’s full moon and detentions and extra Quidditch practice, doesn’t exactly appreciate. He picks up his quill, copying down a few lines from the text.

“Then what?”

“An answer,” Lily starts again, “that you’ve been waiting on for much longer than you should have been.” 

Here’s how it goes. James Potter stops writing, slowly looking up to meet Lily’s gaze, and he sees reflected in her eyes everything that’s been swimming in his for the past year. Echoes of her voice from last term float in his mind as he sits there, staring at the smile that Lily Evans seems to save just for him. He nearly breaks his quill in two, but he holds off, using the same patience he's always had when waiting for her.

“You have to know by now. You deserve to know by now,” Lily tells him, her smile growing with his across the table. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”

And so, for the first time in his Captaincy, James Potter finds reason to cancel practice that evening. 

* * *

**December**

James Potter is a deep sleeper, but there is something different about the noise that can barely be heard above Peter and Remus’ snores. It’s soft and delicate, uncertain, and he pulls back his curtain to see Lily Evans standing in her pajamas with her hand extended out, as if she had been just about to pull them open herself.

At least, he’s fairly certain it’s Lily Evans. He’s not wearing his glasses and it’s dark. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, sleep in his voice. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says with a shrug, and he lifts the covers to welcome her in, her skin cold and slightly clammy. She curls into his chest, burying her head beneath his chin, and she tries to steady her shivering. James’ hand moves up and down her back without a word until her breath is only slightly jagged and her heart isn’t pounding in her ears. 

He twines his fingers in her hair the way he knows she likes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Something. Everything, I don’t know.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Yes. No. Maybe?”

“That works for me.”

“I’m scared,” she whispers. And he doesn’t tell her it’s okay, he doesn’t tell her not to be. He tells her the truth, punctuated with a small kiss to the top of her head.

“Me too.” 

She falls asleep, something she hadn’t been able to do before. And right before she fades away, when she can still feel James’ fingers through her hair, she starts to understand what makes it all worth it.

* * *

**January**

She’s crying and he thinks it’s his fault. 

“Lily, listen, I’m sorry. I’ll go back inside and tell Vernon he’s right, I lost my marbles and I’m unemployed with no future job offers. I’ll get Petunia to make you bridesmaid again, I’ll-”

Lily moans, her crying growing in volume as they sit on the little bench in front of the restaurant under the streetlight. James feels like a bag of dragon dung for taking the dinner a little flippantly, but he's never had much self control when it came to people like Vernon Dursley. He thought Lily had been in on the jokes about cars versus broomsticks, but apparently not. Petunia and Vernon had stormed out of the restaurant and Lily followed, leaving a very confused James to deal with paying for the meal with the Muggle money she instructed him to bring. 

With nothing else to do, James sits with her as she cries, his arm moving up and down her back soothingly. He’s not sure who is more appeased— Lily by the motion, or him by the very fact that she isn’t so angry with him that she’d scorn his presence.

“That was utter  _ shit, _ ” Lily sobs, but her breathing is becoming more even, more tired. 

“I know, I’m utter shit,” James says matter-of-factly. The elderly couple walking by turns to glare at them and he glares back, his back rubbing never ceasing. 

“This was our favorite restaurant and I- I- I thought Tuney would like it, y-you know? Especially because Mum really wanted this. And Petunia treats you like  _ that? _ ”

“I know, I’m utter-- wait, what?” 

“I cannot believe Vernon talked to you like that. Well, I can, but that’s not the point,” Lily continues, and to James’ complete surprise she leans into him, scooting closer on the bench and tucking her head beneath his chin and bringing her legs into his lap. “I knew it was going to be bad. How could it not be? But still. I’m sorry. That was utter shit.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

Lily looks up at him in surprise. “Why would I be mad at you? For getting back at Vernon? That’s only natural.”

“I could have been nicer,” James admits sheepishly. “They’re your family.”

“ _ They  _ could have been nicer,” Lily counters stubbornly. “At least you tried. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Petunia start a night so disgracefully. I’m impressed by her, honestly.”

James tests a bit of humor. “For her remarkable poise and charm? Her self-sacrificing kindness?”

“Well, not exactly,” Lily giggles, relieved because James is wrapping his fingers round her hair like she likes and it’s strange to feel this good and this bad at once. She smiles at him. “I just didn't think it was possible to love anyone more than I love you, but Petunia found it in herself to love that ogre of a man, and I have it so much easier.”

He doesn’t respond which is weird, because she thought it was pretty funny herself. Lily wipes the final tears from her eyes and looks again to James, who is staring down at her in apparent shock.

“What did you just say?” He asks, very slowly.

“That Vernon is an ogre?”

“No, no, I mean that’s obvious but… you love me?”

“Oh,” Lily breathes out. “Yes, actually. Quite a bit.”

His face is breaking into the widest of smiles, and Lily feels her own begin to match his, so she keeps going. “I’ve loved you for quite a while now.”

And, after spending an evening being reminded of how distant she was from her Muggle life, Lily Evans decides to end her night in one of the most Muggle girl ways possible.

They shag in the backseat of her beat up, used car. 

* * *

**May**

“You’ve been sulking.”

“Hello to you too, Evans.”

Lily doesn’t bother to wait for an invitation before she settles into the barstool next to him and signals Madame Rosmerta for another round of drinks. Sirius doesn’t bother to look at her even when she hands him another smoking glass of Firewhiskey, which they both down in one go. 

“So?” Lily prods, adding a shoulder bump for emphasis just to make Sirius at least glance in her direction. 

“So?”

“ _ So,  _ are you going to talk about it or am I going to have to endure another conversation from James about how the  _ real _ love of his life is ignoring him?”

“Oh, please,” Sirius scoffs, giving her a rude side-eye pulled off with such elegance that even Petunia would be jealous of. “Mind your own business for once.”

“James’ business is my business” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re often James’ business.”

“Hmph,” Sirius all but grunts out. “You used to be easier to scare off.”

Lily shrugs, humming an ascension contently, saying nothing. It is, after all, his thinking spot she’s intruded on for no good reason other than James has a double practice preparing for the Cup and the mysterious return of Sirius’ moods and hint of disdain for her has been vexing her all week. She wants it to be like it used to be, getting high in the Astronomy Tower and talking about family without ever talking about family. She wants him to be okay, to talk to her again. 

Sirius Black is the closest thing she has to a brother and siblings are in short supply. She’d like this one back, please. 

It takes more than a minute for Sirius to sigh, to slump his shoulders down, to look almost tired behind the charm of his leather motorbike jacket. 

“I like you, Evans.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

He doesn’t spare her the glare she knows he wants to give.

“Shut up. I’m giving you an answer.”

She twirls the glass a few times in her hands. “What’s the issue, then?”

This time, he does face her with a look of intensity she’d not seen on him before. He speaks, low, so no other patron could hope to overhear. Lily, however, hears the words loud and clear, reverberating through her bones. 

“A blood traitor, a werewolf, and a wizard just a notch above a Squib. Let’s face it, Evans, you were always another noble cause on James’ radar to be picked up.”

He pulls his eyes from hers, as if unable to handle what he sees there. Lily’s grateful. His silver gray eyes aren’t cold— just truthful. And that truth hurts more than his ire. 

“Graduation isn’t far. The war isn’t far. And Evans,” he holds here there again in his gaze, tauntingly. “You’re going to be the death of him.” 

“That’s not true,” Lily cuts back fiercely. “Don’t go around acting like some omen. Don’t put that on me, Sirius.”

He shrugs. “I’m just giving you an answer. I never said you’d like it.”

“I would never ask him to,” she whispers, the dread already seeping in. “I would never let him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sirius says. “He will anyway.”

“No,” Lily shakes her head. “No. I mean it. I’m not asking him to fight in this war.”

Sirius rolls his eyes. “Come off it, Evans. Like that was ever an option for any of us.”

“Maybe,” Lily cedes. “But don’t you see? He’s the only one of us without real skin in the game. We’re marked.” She holds out her forearm, the one carrying the faint red scars from months before. “My blood already sealed my fate. Your’s has too, in some way.” 

He’s staring at her hard, like he doesn’t understand. She continues, voice a whisper. “I  know he’s going to fight. I know that, and I know we have better chances because of him. That’s just…  _ James. _ ” That’s just James. That’s the Potter’s, who have never flaunted their Pureblood, who have never thought themselves better for it but have always known they had to work against it, anyway.

That’s the potential Lily’s always hoped James would live up to in himself and said as much to him a year ago. That’s the James she’s fallen in love with, who would consider it the height of dishonor to pretend as if he could do nothing about the state of the world.

The cost of a just man in an unjust time is losing him. Lily Evans just wasn’t ready to pay that particular price.

“I’ve never liked him fighting my battles for me, and he isn’t going to start now. When it comes to it,” she holds Sirius’ gaze, “I’m the first one down. I’m not going to let him die for me. I’m going to do it first.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything for a while and just sort of sits there, calculating. She can practically see the gears move in his head, see the mental chess game he’s concocted up there. 

“Alright, Evans.” Sirius holds out his hand, waving down two more drinks from Madame Rosmerta. “Here’s the deal. I go first. Or you go first. But James?” He takes the two smoking glasses from Rosmerta without a thank you and hands one to her, holding his own out for a toast. “James doesn’t die. James is the one who lives.”

“He’ll never agree to this. In fact, I think he’d kill us both if he ever found out about this.”

“And that, dear, is why we aren’t going to tell him.”

Lily raises an eyebrow at him, almost exactly the way James would have if he were here in Hogsmeade, rather than on the Pitch. If she had told him where she was going and why. 

“Who could have guessed we’d be dealing in secrets, Sirius?”

“Well,” he acknowledges with a shrug as their glasses  clink in conspiracy. “Who else would you trust as keeper?”

* * *

**June, and the Rest. If it lasted that long. The rest is until October 31, 1981. The rest is as Sirius Black predicted.**

Here’s how it goes. The next time Lily confronts Snape is not the last time she does, but it  _ is  _ the last time she sees him without a mask on. It’s the last time she ever spoke to him, warning him to never try to speak to her or James again.

Snape obliges.

Here’s how it goes. James, of course, fights in the war. Lily Evans does too, and Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew as well. Lily learns quickly that it is a lot harder to promise to live than to promise to die and god, she’s hoping to get them all out alive.

They win a few battles. They lose a lot more. 

Here’s how it goes. James Potter proposes to Lily Evans, who says yes. Lily Evans takes on the name Potter, the only two left in wizard society.

That’s when things start to break down. That’s when Sirius stops talking to Remus, that’s when Lily questions Dumbledore, that’s when no one checks in with Peter, that’s when James wants nothing more than to be seventeen again and running around in the Invisibility Cloak with his three best friends. James is loyal above all else and he can’t even trust himself to get them all out alive. 

The third Potter—a boy— is born. 

Here’s how it goes. A prophecy is heard and overheard. A promise is made, a much more important secret is kept, and everything is okay—

And then they’re dead, one week later. James is first, Lily next. She gets out of her failed promise easy. Sirius pays for his mistake for fourteen years before he finally finds them beyond the Veil.

But the boy? The boy is the one who lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we work with quite limited info from canon so i usually try to call back anything i can -- sirius as a secret keeper, a death omen, etc. i like those easter eggs! anyhoo they all die its fun.
> 
> this one is shorter than the rest, definitely shorter than sixth year, but ive always been a fan of build up so thats what ya get. i really, really, really want to say how grateful i am to y'all who've commented on this story. its been in my head and drafts for years but reading your feedback was genuinely heartwarming and affirming. the story is different and better as a result! and i used to think this would likely be my last, but you've got me reconsidering that fate. 
> 
> thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! i had been writing this for many a year on and off. a magnum opus! and i wanted it out there. thank you for reading!! it'll go through the end of seventh year in chunks like this.


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